by James Yaffe
* * *
The actor nodded at me and ran his hand over his shock of long white hair. The king graciously giving the commoner permission to address him.
“Mrs. Michaels just told us that she wasn’t in her dressing room during that period fifteen minutes before the murder.”
“Well, doesn’t that fit in with my testimony?” Le Sage said. “I couldn’t get her to answer my knock.”
“Why did you have to knock when her dressing room door was wide open?”
“What’s that? Excuse me—”
“She just told us that she looked into her dressing room long enough to pick up her script, then she ran down the corridor into the ladies’ room, not even bothering to shut her dressing-room door behind her. Even if she hadn’t told us that, we could’ve guessed it. She’s well known for her offhand way of not closing doors behind her. So why did you have to knock on her door, when it was wide open and you could’ve seen she wasn’t inside?”
“Well, now…” Le Sage stroked his chin, then opened his mouth, and his eyes grew wide, almost a cartoon of the light dawning. “Of course! Now that you mention it, the door was wide open! Extraordinary the tricks that memory plays on one!”
“It’s not your memory that’s being tricky, Mr. Le Sage. You didn’t go to her door and knock on it, did you?”
“You didn’t?” Sally was staring at him, her eyes flashing. “Randolph Le Sage, you invented that story about knocking on my door and getting no answer! You were deliberately trying to incriminate me!”
“No, no, believe me, Sally darling, there was no such intention! He was asking me what I did when I got down to the basement, he was demanding a detailed itinerary from me—and I was flustered, I had to come up with some details on the spur of the moment. The idea of knocking on your door was simply the first thing that came into my head. Merely a touch of verisimilitude, no ulterior motive whatever!”
“What did you do down in the basement?” I said.
Le Sage’s mouth worked silently for a second or two. He hadn’t decided yet what line he was going to take—piteous breast-beating, righteous indignation, dignified refusal to be bullied? You could almost see the different expressions trying themselves out on his face, until he finally decided on easy amused laughter.
“All right, you’ve caught me in the act, as it were. Marvelous detective work. I bow to you, sir. Sherlock Holmes—who incidentally I played in summer stock early in my career—couldn’t have managed it better.”
“So what were you doing, Mr. Le Sage?”
“What was I doing? Well, everybody else is coming clean, aren’t they? ‘Coming Clean,’ that seems to be the name of this little piece you’re staging this afternoon. Very well, I’ll get into the spirit of the game. I wasn’t in my dressing room. I wasn’t in the wings looking at the play. Nor was I in the men’s room, either throwing up or struggling over my lines. My memory happens to be just about perfect, as a matter of fact, it’s the marvel of everybody in the profession who knows me. To beat around the bush no longer, my dear sir, I was—”
“Let me tell you. You were on the phone.”
He raised his eyebrows at me. “Amazing! Yes, there’s a pay phone at the end of the basement corridor. I went to that phone immediately after I left the stage, and at the time of the murder I was engaged in an important long-distance conversation. With my agent in New York, to be exact. He can confirm my story, if you care to get in touch with him. So can his wife, for that matter. Since it was late at night in New York when I called, I got him at his home rather than his office.”
“Wait a second,” Grantley said. “You’ve got an alibi for the time of the murder?”
“So it would seem,” Le Sage said, smiling benignly.
“Why didn’t you give it to us in the first place?” said Grantley. “Why tell us you were alone in your dressing room, when you could’ve taken suspicion off yourself from the beginning?”
“Interesting question,” said Le Sage. “Suppose we just chalk it up to a perverse streak in my nature. It comes over me sometimes to do things that make no logical sense by the standards of a mundane unimaginative world.”
I could have destroyed his self-possession easily enough. All I had to do was repeat what Mom had said to me about him. “Don’t you see it, from every word that comes out of his mouth? He’s a frightened little man. He don’t know where his next job is coming from. The only person in the world that can give him any hope is his agent. So he’s on the telephone a dozen times every day, and at night too, trying to find out if anything is coming through for him. Didn’t you watch it happening yourself, the day you went to question him?”
“But why wouldn’t he admit he was on the phone, Mom? Why would he throw away a perfectly good alibi?”
“Davie, Davie, put yourself inside his shoes. Who is he out here in Mesa Grande? He’s the successful actor from New York, the big professional who’s doing his old friend a favor and giving the benefit of his experience to these poor no-talent amateurs. Can he admit he’s so desperate to get work that he has to call up his agent late at night? What’s an alibi compared to being humiliated in front of your audience?”
So now, remembering Mom’s words, I decided not to puncture Le Sage’s balloon. He spent most of his life being kicked in the face by people who held his fate in their hands. In other words, he was an actor. Why should I add to his troubles?
Instead, I asked him the question that Mom had especially instructed me to ask him. “When you went down the basement corridor on the way to the phone, did you trip over anything?”
He frowned, “People or objects? Well, either way the answer is no. There was nothing for me to trip over, and there were no other human beings in sight. Why on earth should you ask such a question?”
I’d be telling him in due time. Meanwhile, I had to clear away another one of the small lies, so we could get closer to the big one.
* * *
I turned to Lloyd Cunningham. “You were sitting in the back booth of the Watering Hole during the time of the murder, is that right?”
“Absolutely.”
“Witnesses saw you come into the place around seven-thirty, and they saw you go out again an hour or so later, which was after the murder. But nobody, if I follow you, saw you for most of the time you were in the booth. The waitress gave you a bottle and left you alone, and your booth wasn’t in sight of the bar in front. You could’ve ducked out the back door, been gone for half an hour, then ducked in again the same way, with nobody noticing you ever left.”
Cunningham shrugged. “I suppose I could’ve, but I didn’t.”
“You stayed in that booth the whole time?”
“Right.”
“Then tell us how you knew Lady Macbeth left out an important speech in the scene where she and Macbeth plan to kill the king?”
“Come again?”
“It’s a simple question. When I talked to you the other day, you mentioned that Sally forgets her lines a lot, and the example you gave was a particular speech from that scene. You even identified the speech by quoting its last line, about the cat in the adage. Now Sally never skipped that speech during rehearsals. Le Sage told me she never did, and you can bet he would’ve complained about it if she had. It was only on opening night that she skipped it—which you couldn’t have known unless you were in the theatre at the time, listening to her do it.”
Now it was Cunningham’s turn to be the target of everybody’s stares. The attention made him fidget a little, but less, it seemed, out of fear or worry than out of annoyance. After a while he produced one of his sharp sarcastic laughs and spread his hands in a gesture of defeat. “Okay, I ducked out the back of the Watering Hole. I went to the theatre, I got backstage through the alley door. That scene was going on up on the stage, and that’s when I heard Sally fumbling her lines. But that was a lot earlier than the murder. By the time of the murder I was back in my booth at the Watering Hole.”
“Why did you lie ab
out it?” Grantley said.
“Why do you think? Because I knew everybody’d jump to the wrong conclusions. Everybody would think I was killing Marty Osborn instead of—what I was really doing.”
“Which was what?”
“I don’t think I’d care to say.” Cunningham pressed his lips together and gazed up at the ceiling.
“So I’ll say it for you.” I hope my smug tone of voice wasn’t too obnoxious. “You were setting up the smoke bomb under the trapdoor.”
There was a lot of gasping at this. But Cunningham didn’t seem to be letting it faze him a bit. In fact, he suppressed a little yawn. “You want to know the truth, I’m getting fed up with this Sherlock Holmes crap. What gave you the idea I set up that smoke bomb?”
“It’s obvious,” Mom had said to me last night. “You should only look at this smoke from the correct angle. You should remember what we noticed already, the peculiar way the murderer behaved after the second murder. He carried Hapgood’s dead body and Roger’s unconscious one off the stage and into the basement, because it was important to him that the discovery of these bodies should be delayed. At the same time, he set off a smoke bomb in the theatre, which looks like a good way of getting the police earlier to the scene of the crime. What is it with this mixed-up murderer? He can’t make up his mind what he wants? He’s one of these splitting personalities, two people inside one head?
“Or maybe it really is two people we’re talking about. Maybe the two murders are from one person, and the smoke bomb is from somebody else. Maybe it wasn’t set up under the trap door on the night Hapgood got killed but two nights earlier, on the opening night of the play. Banquo’s ghost was supposed to rise up through this trapdoor in the second act of the play—so maybe, when this happened, the bomb was supposed to go off and the stage and the auditorium would fill up with black smoke. And this would ruin the opening night.
“But this isn’t what happened. On opening night the bomb didn’t go off. Why not? Because the murder happened instead, strictly a separate operation. It happened at the end of the first act, so the actors never got around to the scene with the ghost. So the trapdoor never got used on opening night. Which leaves this smoke bomb all set and ready to go, sticking to the wall under the stage, waiting till the trapdoor does get used. And when is this? Not till last night, when Hapgood is killed and Roger is knocked out and the murderer drops them into the basement through the trapdoor. The smoke bomb goes off, pretty soon it looks like the theatre is on fire! A big shock for the murderer, no? He barely has time to hide Roger in the broom closet—then he gets out of the theatre as fast as he can and runs all the way home.
“But let’s drop the murderer for a while and get back to the smoke bomb. I’m asking myself, who has a motive for ruining the opening night of Macbeth? Who knows all about the trapdoor and exactly when it was scheduled to be used during the production? Who could come up with such an idea, that disaster should strike the play exactly when the Ghost of Banquo appears? Who has such a sarcastic sense of humor? You could even imagine this person thinking to himself he’s the Ghost of Banquo—not the one that gets killed by Macbeth but the one that got maneuvered by Martin Osborn into quitting the play. So he’ll spoil Martin Osborn’s play the same way Banquo’s Ghost spoils Macbeth’s dinner party!”
“In other words, Lloyd,” I finished my explanation, which naturally had been in my words, not Mom’s, “once we separate the smoke bomb from the murders, it smells exactly like you.”
Cunningham shrugged, and his voice and expression couldn’t have been less perturbed. “It was pretty childish, wasn’t it? All I can say about that is, I was mad as hell. I wanted to get back at the son of a bitch. He made a fool out of me, so why shouldn’t I do the same to him? It’s one of Shakespeare’s best plots. Shylock’s pound of flesh. Iago screwing Othello for doing him out of his promotion. Hamlet putting his sword through his father’s killer. What I told myself was, if it’s good enough for the Bard, it’s sure as hell good enough for me!”
For a moment Cunningham twisted his features into a look of triumphant evil that was positively Iago-like. Then he broke off and gave a pleasant easygoing laugh. “Okay, everybody, I apologize. If I’m back on this stage as Banquo in a few weeks, I give you permission to make an asshole out of me with the stupidest practical jokes you can think up.”
Hesitantly a few people started laughing. Then Sally’s laugh rang out, louder and heartier than the rest. “You’re an asshole already, Lloyd, no way we can improve on that!”
This released the laughter in all the others, and it was a while before Sally’s next words could be heard. “One thing I’ll never forgive you for, Lloyd darling. I wear my most beautiful gown in that ghost scene. If that smoke had ruined it…!” She shuddered, then she laughed louder than before. “Oh, well! You’re a baby—but such a talented one, it’s just not possible to stay mad at you!”
Then Sally was on her feet, sailing up to Cunningham, planting a big kiss on both his cheeks.
At that point there was a real danger of the proceedings degenerating into an orgy of hugging and kissing, actor-style, so I spoke up fast. “Hold it, ladies and gentlemen! Sorry to break up the love-in, but it’s time for us to get to the murder.”
* * *
Using all the new information that had come out, we now established where everybody really was just before the murder scene, and I sent them there. Laurie Franz in the wings left; Bernie Michaels in the wings right; Allan Franz in the audience, sitting next to me: Roger as Fleance in the wings waiting for his entrance with Banquo (for purposes of convenience we had Cunningham play Banquo again); the two murderers skulking in the shadows on the stage.
People who hadn’t been on or near the stage took seats in the audience, but first had to announce where, on opening night, they had actually been: Le Sage talking on the pay phone in the basement; Sally holed up in a ladies’-room booth, reciting her lines; Cunningham lurking in the back booth at the Watering Hole.
I played the Third Murderer, Mom having coached me exactly how I was to do it. I waited in the shadows along with Murderers One and Two, then I gave the signal for the scene to begin.
The first two murderers said a few lines, then I said Third Murderer’s line in a hoarse croaking whisper, as he had done on opening night. Then I stopped the scene and asked the two murderers if Third Murderer had seemed to be stooping when he talked to them, pretending to be shorter than he actually was.
They said pretty much what they had said a few days ago. Ordinarily, when they carried on their dialogue with Harold Hapgood, they found themselves talking down to him slightly, even though they weren’t very tall themselves. On the night of the murder they seemed to be at eye level with him. This had seemed perfectly natural to them at the time; only later, when they found out Harold hadn’t been onstage with them that night, they began to wonder if the Third Murderer had been stooping.
Then Banquo and Fleance appeared, at the other side of the stage. They had some lines, too; Cunningham spoke his with great feeling. Then they came toward the center of the stage, and Third Murderer (me) sneaked along the sides until I was planted behind Fleance. Then the cue was given, one of Banquo’s lines, and we cutthroats pounced on our victims.
From the corner of my eye I could see the first two murderers grabbing hold of Banquo, pinning his arms while he struggled. But most of my attention was on Fleance. I flung one arm around his waist, and the other one a I flung around his neck in a chokehold.
“Wait, wait!” Roger was crying out, half strangled.
I relaxed my hold a little so his voice could be heard. “That’s not how he did it on opening night! He put his arm on my chest!”
“What’s the difference?” I said.
“The difference is…” Roger stopped in mid-sentence. Then he shook his head. “With your arm around my neck, I can’t see your hand, I can’t see the ring!”
I could feel him hopping up and down in my grip. “Dave, that’s w
hy the murderer used a different hold on me than Harold ever did. I was supposed to see the ring! I was supposed to identify it as Sally’s!”
Bernie Michaels came charging toward me from his place in the wings right. “I’ve said it all along, Sally’s been deliberately framed! The murderer stole her coat, the murderer stole her ring and made sure Roger would see it—”
“Hold your horses here!” Grantley rose up from his seat in the audience. “If the murderer was wearing Mrs. Michaels’s ring, then she must be the murderer. She’s told us a dozen times already that she never took that ring off her finger on opening night.”
“Yes…” Sally shook her head, looking a little dazed. “That’s true, of course.…”
“All right.” Grantley turned to me with a smirk on his face. “How do you expect to get around that one?”
“It’s simple,” I said.
Sure it was. When I presented the same question to Mom last night, she had answered it without a blink of her eye. “You heard about the fight that Sally Michaels had with Martin Osborn over this ring, a few days before the opening? The same day, in fact, that Lloyd Cunningham quit the play? Osborn told her the ring was too vulgar for Lady Macbeth, it would make her look like a woman with no class. Sally said she would never take off the ring, it was in perfect taste, and she didn’t care from Osborn’s opinion.
“In other words, Sally made up her mind she wouldn’t look like she was taking orders from Osborn or admitting there was even a possibility he could be right. But to herself, in her private thoughts, could she be so sure about this? Could she stop herself from thinking maybe he was right? People like Sally Michaels, what worries them more than anything in the world is somebody should think they’re vulgar, somebody should accuse them they don’t have good taste.
“So you tell a woman like Sally the world’s going to look down its nose at her she should wear a certain ring, believe me you’re tearing her into two pieces. One piece is saying to her, ‘You wear this ring on opening night, and everybody sees your dirty secret that you’re a vulgar person.’ The other piece is saying to her, ‘You don’t wear this ring on opening night, and Martin Osborn has the last laugh on you, he gets the satisfaction you obeyed his orders.’ Vanity on one side, pride on the other—what a megillah!”